These are the general rules of all the forums here at Mecha Talk. No matter what area of the board you are on, these rules must be followed. Failure to adhere to these rules will allow for either immediate banning or a 'strike' against you depending on time spent on the board and seriousness of the offense. If you are given a strike, the third will result in a ban. Very minor offenses (those that break rules unintentionally) may result in a notice without punishment, but these are dealt out at the discretion of the staff. Also, these rules are subject to change at any time. Finally, saying you are new to the forum is NOT an excuse for breaking the rules. It doesn't take more than two minutes to read these rules, so there's no reason for anyone to not have read them before posting.

1. No flaming or trolling. Flaming is being unnecessarily aggressive to someone who you may disagree with, and trolling is purposely attempting to anger people in your posts by using personal attacks, threats and racial/religious slurs.

2. No posting of links or discussion of illegal media is allowed on the forums. This includes fansubs, mp3s, ROMs, manga scanlations, bootlegs and related downloads. If this isn't clear enough to you, that means DO NOT post BitTorrent links, YouTube fansub links, etc of any of the media listed above. Posting of links to official media is permitted.

3. No spamming. Spamming is inappropriately linking to another website for the purpose of getting people to see it. There is an Advertisements forum for websites pertaining to subject matter mentioned on MAHQ, and that's where this should go. If you want to link to your website, blog or forum in your signature, that's ok.

4. No religion or politics will be discussed here, even in the General Discussion forum. This is not the place for your views on either subject. Please note that there is a fine line between discussing these subjects flat out, and discussing them in the context of anime. The latter is allowed but should be focused on the anime. Examples of what is allowed are Zeon-Nazi comparisons in Gundam, or Judeo-Christian references in Evangelion.

5. If a personal issue between yourself and another member or staff comes up, it doesn't belong on the forum. PM them to deal with any issues you have, and if you cannot control it then contact staff to have it settled.

6. Don't post images in threads. Direct image linking from MAHQ or any other site steals bandwidth. Use a simple hypertext link. Example: Use [URL] instead of [IMG] BBCode. ASCII art is neither condoned or approved. If needed, use it sparsely, and keep it small.

8. Any and all pornographic material is strictly prohibited. This includes links to pornographic material, pornographic signatures and avatars, and posting pornographic images. For the record, hentai = pornography.

9. Mecha Talk is an English language board. Posting foreign material for reference or asking for translation of material into English is permitted, but discussions in a foreign language are not. Also, please avoid Netspeak. There are members who do not have English as their native language and try their best to get their points across in English anyway. Do not disrespect them with insults or hackneyed posts that skip vowels or use numerics.

10. Multiple accounts are prohibited. You only need one, and we know if you're doing otherwise. If you think IP dodging is funny as well, advanced measures beyond banning will be applied to those who try to circumvent our enforcement process.

11. Use the search button to see if a topic already has a thread. Also, please read a thread if you plan to post in it. One-line posts are generally frowned upon (i.e. 'lol cool'). In addition, don't double post or bump threads. If you need to add information to a post, use the EDIT function.

12. If a forum has a stickied "Official" topic, all posts relating to that subject must go in that thread for as long as it's stickied.

13. If a topic has been closed because of some problem, don't start another thread about the exact same thing. The original thread was closed for a reason.

14. There is a swear filter in place, and part of its purpose is to keep discussion civil. You can have a discussion and make your points without swearing. Also, do not attempt to circumvent the filter by typing words like: f*ck, sh*t, etc.

15. Don't start list threads where people will just make a list of things they like or don't like. We want to have actual discussions in our topics, not just useless lists of things with no explanation.

Enforcement:
When a rule is broken, a PM will be sent to you by a staff member detailing what you had done and the aforementioned punishment alloted to you. The thread will be edited with a detail of why it was breaking a rule, or outright deleted.

"What did catch my eye, however, was a podcast named Gundamn!. At first I thought it was a podcast about firearms and [rednecks] discussing their collection, but after looking at the episode titles I was sold." - Xhavalor